Beyond the usual activists who call attention to every murder of a woman in Turkey — 294 last year alone, according to one tally — throngs of ordinary citizens and politicians, across wide swaths of society, have turned their attention and outrage to the killing of Ozgecan Aslan.

She was the last passenger on a minibus last Wednesday, returning to her home in the southern province of Mersin when her driver veered off his route. In a reported confession after her body turned up burnt and mutilated in a riverbed, the driver said he beat her with an iron pipe after she fought off his attempted rape.

According to local media, she had scratched at him in the struggle and, to destroy whatever evidence remained beneath her nails, the suspect said he cut off her fingers and set her body ablaze with the help of his father and a friend.

The news of her brutal death triggered an outpouring of grief in the streets and on social media where women in Turkey shared anecdotes of harassment they have faced.

At Aslan’s funeral Saturday, women reportedly broke customs and carried her coffin so that no male would touch her again.

Meanwhile, members of the country’s conservative government, often accused of fostering a male-dominant culture that leads to abuse of women, appeared to confront the violent undercurrents in Turkey with a new determination.

Turkish workers protested the violence against women outside Parliament in Ankara after university student 20 year old Ozgecan Aslan was stabbed to death on February 13.

Image: Basin Foto Ajansi/LightRocket via Getty Images

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated, in an unusual remark, that violence against women was Turkey’s "bleeding wound." His two daughters paid a visit to Aslan’s family, while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed that he and his wife would begin an initiative aimed at curbing violence against women. The women’s branch of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), meanwhile, set up booths throughout Istanbul where passersby could write condolences to Aslan’s family.

“It is the nightmare of every parent,” said Zeynep Jane Kandur, an AKP member and a former vice president of the party's women's branch, explaining why the response to Aslan’s death has been so strong. “I think the answer lies at the heart of Turkish society. A young girl out with friends, returning home by public transport assuming she is safe, is attacked and killed.”

In the past, Erdogan's government has gained notoriety for riding roughshod over delicate moments of mourning and responding to concerns about gender inequality with controversial comments. At an international conference on women’s rights, for example, Erdogan bluntly stated that men and women are not equal, according to the laws of nature and Islam, which has “defined a position for women: Motherhood.”

Erdogan’s allies have made headlines with similar comments, which seem to pop up in papers every week. The deputy prime minister, for example, sparked a social media firestorm last year after he told a religious gathering that a woman must not laugh in public.

"Where are our girls, who blush delicately, lower their heads and turn their eyes away when we look at their faces, our symbols of chastity?" he asked.

Women’s rights groups argue that this sort of rhetoric contributes to alarming rates of violence against women in Turkey. A United Nations study published in 2011, for example, found that nearly 40 percent of women in Turkey had experienced some sort of physical abuse at the hands of a partner, compared to 22 percent of women in the U.S. These statistics come to life on the evening news where the faces of women beaten and killed flash on the screen amid the usual roundup of car accidents and crime.

Last summer, surveillance footage that captured a bus driver in Istanbul punching a female passenger in the face played on a loop. It ran not long after a contestant on a dating game show said that he was now looking for love again, after having served his time for killing two previous partners.

Booths set up by the AK Party Women's branch in Istanbul in response to Aslan's murder.

Image: AK Party Women's branch, Istanbul

Women’s rights groups in Turkey have made significant progress in the last decade, successfully advocating for legal reforms including the criminalization of marital rape and workplace sexual harassment. The high rates of violence (and its presence in the news), meanwhile, is seen as a sign of progress among some who remember the days when such matters were not reported to authorities, but swiftly swept under the rug.

Members of Istanbul’s Feminist Collective acknowledged that the reactions to Aslan’s murder "across all parts of society" were "undoubtedly significant." But their enthusiasm has been tempered by what they see as a reluctance, among politicians, to "recognize their responsibility in Ozgecan’s murder."

The state "legitimizes rape and encourages men by suggesting that the raped woman should give birth to the child or arguing that the woman should not have worn a mini skirt," the group wrote in a statement.

Indeed, religious and government figures, even in their condemnations of Aslan’s murder and violence against women generally, managed to stir up further controversy. One religious leader did so by writing that Aslan was a martyr because she died "protecting her purity."

Erdogan, meanwhile, balked at criticism of his own remarks condemning attacks on women.

"I show up and say women were entrusted to men by God. These feminists ... they show up, asking, ‘What does it mean to be entrusted?' They say this 'is an insult,'" he said Tuesday, according to Today’s Zaman. Feminists "don't have a link to our civilization, belief and religion."

Yet he vowed, again, to personally track the case against those allegedly responsible for Aslan’s grisly death, and has continued to call for an end to violence against women — a goal that, at the very least, he and his critics appear to share.

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